Hi Ayal, I wrote you years ago when my life was much darker and you helped me tremendously. However, I have entered into some sort of 'grey' period right now and don't know what to do.

I've recently moved to the area of my dreams, begun and maintained a successful freelance business, married the man of my dreams, have great friends, and been nicotine free for almost two years. Life sounds pretty good and I try to make sure that I am grateful for everything, but I guess here are my problems:

I feel lonely. True, I'm completely across the country and away from my friends physically and that has a lot to do with it. But there are days when I begin to think that no one loves me or cares about me. Logically, I know that they do, but it's like there isn't enough proof to sate me--not even from my husband.

In my loneliness, I have turned to food as a companion. Again, I realize this, but can't seem to stop myself from eating. I want to be a little thinner than I am right now, but I seem to be shoveling in food without any thought to this goal of mine. I can sense on some level that I am feeding my loneliness, but I don't know how to change that.

I am also delving into my dark side of perfectionism and workaholism. I take on too many freelance projects, thinking that each one will make my creativity feel nurtured or that I will 'snap' into some sort of happiness and bliss with my job. I love my job, don't get me wrong, but I seem to think that more is better and I don't know how to feel that enough is enough.

On the outside, I try to be happy and smiley, but as soon as I'm with friends, I get withdrawn and into a space where I feel the need to impress, making myself awkward and uncomfortable.

I know this is a lot, but I just want to get an opinion on where I might be able to start to get back to the lovely me that I have found. Blessings.

Hi. What is first of all, showing up for you is an issue of "Defeatism: no longer caring for the self." This leads to anxiety, and the affirmation is:

"I love and approve of myself. It is safe for me to care for myself."

When, on a deep level, we feel that somehow we are worthless, when we don't, on the deepest, core level, love ourselves, when our wound involves this lack of love for oneself, there is a terrible loneliness because we are cut off from ourselves. No one else can give this to you but you, and so the first and foremost place where you must be connected to love is within yourself. Because that love and taking care of oneself, that deep, self nurturing is absent, we look to other things to fill that vacuum, such as food.

Perhaps because you have some successes in your life now, and you are getting clear feedback that you ARE worth something, the deeper levels of this wound are now able to rise to the surface to be healed. You have a stronger foundation to be able to deal with them now, and you can face the deeper levels of this woundedness.

So, as with any woundedness, you feel it, you sit with it, you let it be released from your being, like sweat, or a fever, and you free yourself of it. Let it rise up, feel it, then let it go. Realize that it is safe now to feel it and let it go - that it is ok to recognize it and yet not get entangled with it by believing it. When you have a fever, you don't say: "I am this fever," but you do let it pass through you. This belief isn't you. The energy it carries isn't you, but, it does have to pass through you to be released, like any toxin in the body. As you said, you know who the real you is. A good technique is to gather it together, when you are feeling it, or thinking negative thoughts about yourself, and place it into a clear bubble in front of your navel. Then send this bubble up to the sun, where the heat and radiance of the sun dissolves it. Then see a clear bubble filled with golden, radiant light coming to you from the sun, coming into the top of your head and flooding your entire being with positive, loving, self appreciation and self worth energy.

The journey toward Self love is, I think, the most profound journey we can make. It's what we're all here for, and it is what enlightens and illumines us. But, it involves facing your core beliefs and your places of greatest pain, undoing all false programs, all encoded DNA issues, and facing all of your illusions ... so it involves a lifetime - lifetimes, in fact. Self love does not mean ego - it means dwelling in the eternal place of your Spirit - being connected to source - and that is no small potatoes of an accomplishment. You're doing fine. Just keep on going.

Here is a link to a free 20-minute track from iAwake Technologies - a sample of the type of tools that will deepen your meditation immediately and help you quickly become a successful meditator. It's the opening track of iAwake's flagship product, the Profound Meditation Program, called the iAwake Experience...